2025-04-14 01:53:21
Something changes when we are being witnessed. Maybe it’s like the observer effect: the mere presence of consciousness alters the situation.
Last weekend, I stood in Times Square in a shamanic-energy-dance circle. Like, an actual circle of flowers. On the floor. At the heart of Times Square. With a person banging the drum and a handful of people moving. The event had been organized by a wonderful dance teacher with her Siberian shaman friends visiting the city.
Depending on which part of me you ask, the whole thing seemed either earnest and precious or very cringe. Like, hyper-cringe. Mortifying.
Step into the circle. Move. Be weird. Be witnessed.
I felt an incredible amount of resistance but also an intuition to go. And at this point I try not to argue with my inner voice of clarity. So I joined this tiny dance to a lonely drum. A little vortex in the massive stream of traffic, tourists, and flashing lights.
Honestly, I felt wave after wave of embarrassment wash over me.
People stopped and stared. A few took pictures. Some laughed, others shrugged. We shared the corner with a guy and his big sign. Occasionally, he’d tell the crowd to repent and resist the devil. Accept Jesus as your savior. Times Square: still a place of free expression.
After a while, things started to feel unreal. I might as well have been a character in a video game. The feeling of humiliation faded.
People came and went. Faces of a faceless crowd. An infinite stream of flickering attention. Curiosity or judgment followed by a thirst for the next source of entertainment. I realized that it didn’t matter. They didn’t actually care. I was dealing with my experience, with my reaction. There were still jolts of anxiety and self-consciousness, but the bedrock sensation turned into a kind of equanimity.
People, traffic, sounds, my feelings . . . it was all one big stream, layered rhythms rising and fading.
Alright, you say. So what?
Well, I’ve bumped into this idea of the witness repeatedly recently. In dance, music, in coaching and healing spaces, and, yes, in writing.
I’ve been experimenting a lot with journaling.
What is the most powerful way to spend 15-20 minutes with pen and paper?
What is possible?
This brought me to intention and intensity.
While regular journaling is valuable, it can easily turn into a trap. It’s helpful to crystalize our stream of thoughts. Fixed on the page, the inner world can be examined. But the level of mind can be its own comfort zone. Stories turn into loops and journaling becomes an excuse to keep thinking and avoid feeling.
But I don’t want to passively record what happens to me.
I want to re-write my story.
I want to shape it.
I want to tap into more energy. I am looking for greater flow. I know there is a source of greater creative potential — and I want to connect with it.
I am looking for movement.
Movement on the page.
Movement in life.
Which is why I look for that which refuses to move, that which yearns to dissolve.
“Every man has . . . matters in his mind which he would not reveal even to his friends, but only to himself, and that in secret,” Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote in Notes from the Underground. “But there are other things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself.”
This may be the most important quote I know about journaling. If you can meet yourself with radical honesty, I don’t know if I have anything to teach you.
That which we are afraid to face even in the private space of our mind cannot move. It is frozen.
I am talking about the locked rooms of our inner house. Yellow tape on the doors. I am talking about barrels filled with emotions and memories labeled unsafe or undesirable.
You may know the symptoms.
Lack of energy, clarity, and creativity. Lack of flow. Maybe physical ailments like tension or back pain. You know the tired eyes behind the masks.
I always think of Dante and the beginning of his Divine Comedy. The poet finds himself lost in a dark forest.
When I had journeyed half of our life’s way,
I found myself within a shadowed forest,
for I had lost the path that does not stray. — Canto I, Columbia’s Digital Dante
“I cannot clearly say how I had entered the wood; I was so full of sleep just at the point where I abandoned the true path.” He awakens to his situation. Add a smartphone and some singing bowls and that’s kind of how I feel.
Dante can see the sun which “which serves to lead men straight along all roads,” but his path is blocked by three beasts. He needs help. Roman poet Virgil appears to guide him on “another path” out of the “savage wilderness.”
It’s a pilgrimage into the realm of shadows. Every circle of hell offers Dante a chance to develop greater awareness of the human condition. He watches souls tortured in infinite loops and of course gets most “triggered” when he detects his own flaws in them.
At the very bottom, Dante and Virgil find Satan, the “emperor of the despondent kingdom,” in a frozen lake.
It is a place beyond language. “I grew faint and frozen then,” Dante reports in Canto 34. “I cannot write it: all words would fall far short of what it was.”
What a powerful image.
It’s the place farthest from the light, devoid of motion and warmth. Frozen. The energy of death. Satan in Doré’s illustration seems to be stewing in resentment. Stuck in his commitment to a futile rebellion against creation. A denial of love and forgiveness.
Dante’s pilgrimage is a microcosm of how I think about the potential of journaling. To find our path forward and upward, we must occasionally make a detour.
If we find our way blocked, it’s time to follow the trail of shadow words and enter our maze.
We must visit the spaces we avoid and meet the parts of ourselves that have been judged, disowned, and abandoned. We must meet what — who — is frozen in time.
Signs I look for:
Inaction on a goal, change, or decision. Not doing the thing.
Lack of clarity. Unsure what “the thing” even is.
Feeling disconnected:
From emotions, inner truth, and guidance;
From flow, energy, and creativity;
From the present moment.
Feeling the weight of holding on to the past — to ideas, projects, relationships, or physical matter. Is there space for something new to emerge?
Then I look for the trail. . . What have I been avoiding? What am I hesitant to even think? What words are stuck in my throat? I try to get out of the way and let the pen tell the story.
All it takes is pen, paper, and privacy. That’s the portal. (I know that if another person is in the same room, some amount of self-censorship of the authentic experience will happen.)
I seek to meet what I find with curiosity and warmth. If possible, I play with increasing the intensity of experience. This can be as simple as saying the words out loud after writing them (hearing the thought → letting it be written → then consciously speaking it out loud).
Afterward, what is frozen may want to move. How could I give it shape? What forms of creative expression are possible?
I believe there is gold to be found in the shadow. There is art, wisdom, and energy yearning to be shared. That doesn’t mean going public, let alone stepping into Times Square. It can be as simple as a conversation with one person we trust. But something changes when we are being witnessed.
Meet what feels cold and dead with light and heat.
Let it dissolve. Let it move.
Bring it back to life.
Meet it, experience it, give it shape, express it, be witnessed — and let it go.
Here’s the tricky part. I’ve learned a lot about going into shadow. I am still figuring out what comes next.
It all seems to boil down to love and acceptance: “Is it okay to be me?” Am I okay with all that I am? Is there space in this world for everything I am? Big questions once you get a glimpse of the many rooms in your house. Important questions, too. If we can’t accept all that we are, can we accept others fully?
That path leads away from the page. It is not a path of reading, writing, or thinking. It is a path of direct experience. I find that the frozen often exists in a realm beyond language and I think the same is true when we look for an answer or way to express it.
That’s what brought me to these odd shamanic spaces: the path upward is energetic. It’s about connection and capacity, capacity to love and forgive what weighs us down. It’s not about finding objective truth. Or at least it has not been that way for me.
I couldn’t quite put my fingers on it when I wrote about writer-director Taylor Sheridan, but the connection between creativity and energy now seems obvious. It’s all people, places, practices, and intention — and how those translate into action.
For me right now it’s simple stuff: meditation, walks among trees, the room of intimate conversation. I am building a little stack of tools and frameworks — breath, sound, tapping, TRE, Internal Family Systems. But nothing has been more profound than embodied creative practices — vocalization and free form dance above all.
I like to write (and talk), but language is just a map. It can point you toward a realm of possibility, but it is no substitute for walking.
Journaling works best when it feels least like writing.
It works best when it turns into a channel, when it feels like movement and connection to something deeper, greater, stranger, and more powerful than the conscious mind.
It works best when it creates more aliveness. Sometimes that leads into darkness and involves tears. Other times it happens in the bright lights of the Big Apple’s flashing billboards.
— Frederik
Nobody must ever know that I [thought / said / did / desired] . . . [x].
What important moment(s) explain where I am that I would never share (that I would never put on my bio/CV)? What am I hiding and why?
If I truly and deeply loved myself, would I . . . do this / keep myself from doing this / let this be done to me / accept this in my life? What can I find out about what is behind what I don’t like about my life?
Try the Sarno method. Brain dump every big stressor in your life (past, present, character traits). I don’t know about you, but chances are that you’re censoring how you really feel about these. Notice that. Where do you hold yourself back?
Gun to the head: imagine you woke up in the middle of the night with a gun to your head. You hear a voice: Tell me more about this . . . tell me the whole story. Everything. Be honest!
Imagine that every time you hold back, every time you stumble, every time you police your language and make it nice and polite, imagine that the voice knows. Imagine it thundering: Tell me the truth! Tell me your truth, the truth as only you experience it right now.
Be as specific as you can. Write it down. Say it out loud. Keep going until you find what is truly frozen. That can turn into a source of motion, wisdom, and energy. It might not happen in a short journaling session (though I hope you can release some of the pain and tension). But this is your access point.
You can do the same exercise with your life’s story. Say your “elevator pitch” or imagine you gave a TED talk about your life. Then bring in the voice.
2025-04-04 23:49:50
What a day I picked to host the first mindbody writing event.
I woke up under the weather and with a headache. Trump crashed markets. People were operating diesel-powered cutters down in the yard. And yet . . . and yet: we sat down to write. We slowed down. We allowed ourselves to be curious, to connect with our truth and inner wisdom.
Thank you to all who joined! I learned a ton. Here’s to many more of these experiments. Join me if you dare!
I’ve attached the recording of my introduction. I also share these on youtube.
Next week Thursday, April 10, at 6pm Eastern Time. → Register here.
I will alternate times and weekdays to give people in different time zones a chance to join.
If you didn’t get a chance to attend, why not try one of these prompts this weekend?
Pen and paper. 15+ minute timer. Make a conscious decision to step into radical honesty with yourself. Close your eyes, take a few deep breaths, like voo-humm. Get centered in your body. (I recommend 5 minutes of relaxing HRV breathing.)
If I truly and deeply loved myself, would I . . . let myself do this, hold myself back from doing this . . . let this be done to me . . . carry this weight . . .
Everything would change if I could forgive this person:
If money could speak, this is what it would tell me:
What important inner wisdom am I not acting on? Why?
If I had the time, skill, courage . . . I would tell [the world / someone] this: ___ (“Or: “these are the words stuck in my throat”)
Regular journaling is a story we tell ourselves at the end of the day.
Mindbody writing is about movement, connection, and energy
Movement on the page → movement through life
Shift from thinking to feeling, from mind to body and beyond — to the unconscious, to intuition
What is stuck? What do I carry? Can I release that energy? Can I let myself the energy of the shadow words and find the gold that lies behind?
I forgot how foreign pen and paper have become to many. Took me a while to get used to it, too. In the beginning my hands cramped. It gets better and easier over time. Think of it as an investment.
That’s one big advantage of the page over the screen: the hand can reflect the emotion. You can go really BIG and tiny, fast and slow, ALL CAPS or cursive . . . make circles and lines and big loops or boxy letters, . . . the screen is very limited compared to what can flow through your fingers.
It’s a chance to step away from all screens, to disengage from the land of fomo and stress and be present and curious with yourself.
“Pages must be done longhand. The computer is fast—too fast for our purposes. Writing by computer gets you speed but not depth. Writing by computer is like driving a car at 85 mph. Everything is a blur. “Oh, my God, was that my exit?” Writing by hand is like going 35 mph. “Oh, look, here comes my exit. And look, it has a Sonoco station and a convenience store.” — Julia Cameron
My writing is still often messy, sometimes illegible. Messy is okay! It’s not supposed to be neat or pretty. It’s about giving shape to “what is”, about meeting yourself with as much honesty as possible, about getting out of the way of what could flow through you.
If creative sparks fly, you’ll just type them up after. It’s not a big deal compared to not being able to tap into all your inner wisdom and energy. I keep a second little journal for highlights and nuggets.
I have tons of prompts and a toolkit of different practices. I tried to jam too much into one session. Next time will be more focused.
Also: I like hearing myself talk. Will set a timer for my introduction.
Setting, process, rituals and cues are important. I want to explore more what tools help us enter the right “mind body space.” Also the tools to integrate what we find. I’ll have to put together a basic workbook. And watch me try to screenshare youtube or spotify next time🙈
One hour is pretty short. We’ll skip the offering next time.
If you plan to join, take some time to reflect on the questions below (journal about them :) ). See where they can lead you. Things can shift long before we sit down to do the work.
I will talk for ~15 minutes about the practice
~15 minutes of solo writing time
Time for discussion, questions, sharing, and feedback
This is a private space. No AI bots. I record the introduction but not the discussion. Everything you write is for your eyes and benefit only. There is time to share and discuss if you feel called to do so
A pen that flows well (I use basic ones like these sharpies and pilots)
I recommend a dedicated journal for these exercises
Reflect on things you want to explore
Think of something you want to move in your life. A project, a goal, a decision, a relationship, a project, or an area in your life in which you feel stuck.
And/or: make a list of sources of stress and anxiety
Rate each area of your life: how satisfied are you? (1 lowest, 10 highest)
Career & Work:
Money & Finances:
Partner & Love:
Family & Friends:
Creativity:
Spirituality:
Personal Growth & Learning:
Health & Fitness:
Fun & Enjoyment:
In which area(s) are you settling for less than you deserve? Why?
What are the top 2-3 things currently causing anxiety or unease?
How clear are you about compass? How connected do you feel to your purpose?
What important moment(s) of your life cannot be found on your CV but explain(s) where you are today? Which of these do you . . . share, celebrate, hide?
If you had the time and skill, what story would you tell / what idea would you share?
What important inner truth are you not acting on? Why?
If journaling could lead to 1-2 outcomes or changes in your life, what’s the best you would hope for?
If you had a magic wand, what major change would you make in your life? What is your highest and best hope? What is getting in the way?
What are you unusually passionate about? How do you share or express it with others?
What would you love to tell the world, but it feels impossible? What words are stuck in your throat?
2025-04-02 05:59:46
I keep returning to this idea that people are our mirrors. “Everyone is a mirror image of your own thinking coming back at you,” Byron Katie wrote in Loving What Is.
It works for noticing shadow. “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves,” as Carl Jung put it. But where there is shadow, there is also gold.
I’ve been having lots of meetings recently and a lot of the people I meet are covered in gold. The stories and ideas they carry sparkle like a pile of gemstones. Well, almost. Their treasure exists in the realm of potential. It is unmanifest.
When I notice, I can’t help but ask:
Have you written about that?
When those words cross my lips, I know I’ve entered “most wonderful job in the world” territory. I can feel myself light up.
I find myself in the presence of something subtle and holy. Like communion. Not the Christian sacrament, Communion with a capital C, but communion as an intimate space of sharing, of being witnessed, of being vulnerable. A moment of inspiration and aliveness.
I’m not saying everyone should write in public. It’s just an expression of curiosity: that’s so interesting, have you dug into it? Have you given it shape or shared it? Have you written, spoken, painted, drawn, danced, sung, built, drummed, or carved . . . that?
. . . then I hear the shadow words. And the real communion begins.
You know the words I’m talking about.
What if I failed? What would people think? What — and who — could I lose?
What if I succeeded? Who would I be? What would I have to sacrifice?
It’s too difficult. I don’t know enough. Nobody would care or understand.
I could never . . . I am not a storyteller, not a writer, not interesting enough, not smart enough, not funny enough . . . not . . . enough.
Shadow words are as old as time. Exodus 3:10-11: “What makes you think that I could ever go to Pharaoh and lead the children of Israel out of Egypt?” Who, me? I could never!
Shadow words can feel like the weight of a lifetime. A ball and chain to keep us in place. Back pain to distract us from our gold.
Shadow words exhaust me, but I respect them. They tell me that I’m in someone’s labyrinth. There’s gold here, but also people’s demons.
I try to slow down and tap into my intuition. I reach out and feel the walls. What is the texture of this space? Are there markers to guide us? Can I find a light switch?
What I do, and someone had to point this out to me, is that I channel my inner bunny.
Picture a rabbit: big ears. Soft and warm. Gentle. Totally present. A good listener. A patient witness. The bunny does not judge. It is not pushy. By its nature it is excited to go down a rabbit hole.
Shadow words point toward an age-old nasty cocktail made with ingredients like fear, doubt, judgment, and pain.
I am afraid, I worry.
I don’t think I can.
I am not worthy. I don’t deserve.
I feel alone, separate, disconnected. . .
They point toward a simple question: Is it okay to be me?
Is there space in this world for . . . who I am, for how I am, for everything I am? Am I okay with all that I am — with everything I have done, thought, and felt? Can I meet everything I am with love and forgiveness?
Because if I could — if I felt completely comfortable and deeply in love with every aspect of myself — then of course I would share. It would be the most natural thing. Like asking for the butter at breakfast.
Unfortunately, the world can feel cold and threatening, judgmental and competitive. Maybe it does not feel like a place where it’s okay to be visible and take up space. Maybe it feels like you’re alone in your tower at night. The wolves are out there, howling at the moon. Maybe it feels like you need to protect yourself.
I get that. My safe space is a kind of isolation.
Give me a screen, books, journals. I am comfortable by myself. I don’t like to think about the downside of this behavior, the many relationships that died for lack of nourishment.
And of course there can be sacredness in solitude, in the communion with a greater force of being. But the gold I’ve been finding recently becomes visible in connection. It requires a shared space in which energy can flow.
It requires a conversation like a communion.
A magic space of curiosity and sharing that leads to the source of infinite possibility.
A space in which it’s okay to just be me.
That’s what the bunny means to me. Let the wolves be wolves for a moment and hang out with an animal that is friendly, harmless, and attentive. How nice to be heard and witness. How nice to just . . . be.
When we feel seen, accepted, maybe even understood, we remember that separation is not truth. We see a path to face the shadow and find the gold that lies behind it. We get a glimpse of what is possible.
To get there, we need to see our glow reflect in the eyes of another. To find our light, we need others who light up in our presence. We need to see it so we can believe it.
I need that, too. Last week, someone told me my questions were very intuitive. I blushed. What, me? Nooooo, you’re not serious, awwwww . . .
What I’m talking about is simple and available to all of us.
It’s as ordinary as setting an intention and preparing a space.
It’s as trivial as loving, gentle curiosity.
It’s as unremarkable as staying curious. Tell me more. I would love to hear about that. Actually, I totally think you could!
It’s as mundane as an empowering question: Have you written about that? What if you just . . . went for it?
That’s how we find the diamonds among our pebbles. That’s how we see the ancient patterns hidden in the endless sand. That’s how we remember the sun is right there, behind the clouds.
These conversations help us feel our lightning and hear our stream.
It must be the most wonderful job in the world to have them over and over, to be a mirror for magic, an instrument of sympathetic resonance, a tuning fork that vibrates in the presence of aliveness.
When we spot the gold in others, we get to enjoy the glow.
When we share our light, we get to be the light.
That said, what really excites me is that I don’t have to do the writing afterwards.
— Frederik
Channeling the rabbit for more magical conversations.
Preparation. Big ears and stillness.
Approach conversation with intention. Think of each as a room. What does the space feel like? What is the invitation?
If I can’t be present with myself, how can I be a good listener? Meditation, journaling, and walks anchor my days. Something simple like a few minutes of breathing — HRV or 4-7-8, for example — can help me find my center. When I overschedule on the other hand, my attention starts to frazzle.
This goes both ways: for my guidance calls, I send people questions to prepare. If someone can’t be bothered to invest ~10 minutes to reflect ahead of time, that has proven to be a meaningful red flag. My tolerance for this declined when I realized that my opportunity cost is a magical conversation with someone else.
Soft, warm, and gentle.
Prepare to share. Remember the levels of intimacy. People will meet you where they perceive you to be. If you’re all polished and business, the conversation will likely remain at that surface level.
We all experience inner conflict. I find it more interesting to explore polarities than to weigh in and support a side. There is information in resistance. Harmony requires that all voices are heard.
A mantra: I’m not here to tell anyone what to do. I don’t know what anyone should do. I just try to be present, curious, and I allow myself to get excited.
Ready for rabbit holes.
It’s nice to prepare, but don’t let an agenda get in the way of aliveness. I look for what wants to move. Sometimes it’s obvious, other times it hides below the surface. Both light and shadow words can lead us there.
Meeting shadow.
I find that treasure often lies at the intersection of talent and trauma. Where does the struggle to be human meet passion, skills, and knowledge?
I try to notice objections to curiosity, aliveness, and dreams. I try to inquire gently: What is behind the resistance? What makes this negative statement true or not true? What makes the other person think so — what part of them believes it to be true? What feelings or memories come up?
The emotional component is more complex.
First, the mind avoids discomfort. “I think” is a clue that someone is returning to their story after touching emotional truth. Sometimes it’s good to analyze, but often this is a diversion.
We all wear masks and people can be disconnected from their emotions. There is a lot of wisdom concealed, but I don’t know whether the other person wants to go there. I am curious: What is behind the fear and the tension? What is underneath the anger? But it’s all up to the other person.
I tend to recommend mindbody writing or specific prompts. Sometimes it’s obvious that follow-up conversations would be invaluable.
Eye on the prize.
The end goal, as I see it, is to meet everything within us with love and forgiveness.
Dealing with shadow is not easy. Affirmation is worth its weight in gold.
I picked up two prompts from James Pennebaker’s Opening Up by Writing It Down, a book about the science behind ‘expressive writing’ — writing about stressful or traumatic events.
“Benefit finding: Identify an event and then focus on the positive aspects of the experience; this might include a focus on how you have grown or changed as a person . . . and how you might be better equipped to meet future challenges.”
“Best possible future self: Think about your life in the future and write about this life as if you have worked hard and succeeded at accomplishing all of your life goals.” What is your highest and best hope?
Use these to ‘close out’ an investigation of the shadow space.
2025-03-29 00:09:42
Hello friends,
Time for more experiments!
I’ve written a lot about the power of different journaling methods. I’ve long wondered what it would be like to explore these together. I will explore a few online space as free experiments while I figure out the format I like best.
The first will be next week Thursday, April 3, at 11 am Eastern Time. → This is the link to register.
Future ones will be at different times and weekdays to give people in different time zones a chance to join.
Rough format:
1 hour
Have pen and paper ready (I would recommend either a fresh journal or one you use for journaling/writing exercises)
I will share some thoughts and pointers about the writing practices I use
~15 minutes of solo writing time
Your choice of trying a stream-of-consciousness method or a prompt. Pick what feels most interesting/relevant
Time for discussion, questions, sharing, and feedback
Maybe pointers/prompts on how to continue the practice on your own
I want to record the introduction and prompt to share them later. I will not record the discussion. This will be a private space. Everything you write will be for your eyes and benefit only.
On this note: does anyone know how to keep out AI bots like Otter that create automated transcripts?
Price of admission. The first few spaces will be free but I ask for an offering. Bring one thing that moved or touched you. Could be anything — a quote, the name of a song, book, movie, a poem, a moment in your life, an image . . .
And for yourself: bring something that you want to move or whose movement you find challenging. Something stuck or maybe something moving in the wrong direction. Reflect on it ahead of time . . . maybe it will come up during the journaling exercise. Or maybe not. You never know.
I share different versions of these questions with anyone getting on a personal guidance call with me.
If you plan on joining the call, spend some time with these. Copy them into a fresh document. See where they lead you. Things can start to shift long before we sit down to do the work.
Before you write anything, make a conscious decision to step into radical honesty with yourself. Close your eyes, take a deep breath. Get centered in your body. (I recommend 5 minutes of relaxing HRV breathing.)
Rate each area of your life: how satisfied are you? (1 lowest, 10 highest)
Career & Work:
Money & Finances:
Partner & Love:
Family & Friends:
Creativity:
Spirituality:
Personal Growth & Learning:
Health & Fitness:
Fun & Enjoyment:
In which area(s) are you settling for less than you deserve? Why?
What are the top 2-3 things currently causing anxiety?
Do you feel stuck? If so, how?
Stuck on a specific goal, change, or decision
Stuck in an area
Disconnected from purpose, flow, energy, creativity
Disconnected from emotions, inner guidance
Different kinds of writing (among other practices) can help in each area.
Do you know your compass? What do you refuse to compromise on? How connected do you feel to your purpose?
What are you unusually passionate about? How do you share or express it with others?
What important moment(s) of your life cannot be found on your CV but explain(s) where you are today? Which of these do you . . . share, celebrate, hide?
What would you love to tell [the world / your partner / your family / your boss / … ] but it feels impossible?
If you had a magic wand, what major change would you make in your life? What is your highest and best hope? What is getting in the way?
What important idea/truth do you know but are not acting on? Why?
If journaling could lead to 1-2 outcomes or changes in your life, what’s the best you would hope for?
If you had the time and skill, what story would you tell / what idea would you share?
2025-03-28 05:54:18
Alright, here’s the deal: the time of my move is coming closer and I’m working hard to drop weight. I have a stack of finance books that I won’t be taking with me. They have been marked up, which means I can’t sell them at Strand.
I’m planning a road trip out west, otherwise I will be around the next few weeks. If one or several of these interest you, send me an email with the titles and we can schedule a date & time to pick them up (I live a couple of blocks from Union Square). First come first serve. Afternoon/evening only.
Otherwise, you know, they will enter the book sharing box at Stuyvesant Square Park where I must have left a hundred books already. . .
That’s it.
2025-03-23 02:58:58
It’s so easy to lose the golden thread, the thread that guides us through the labyrinth of life.
It happens to me when I get stuck in my head.
And that can happen oh so quickly.
It happens when I look for an optimal solution to a complicated issue. Like, where to move. Much cheaper than NYC. Access to nature. But also enough culture and community to connect with. Enough local weirdos. An active dating scene? Lower taxes? Distance to family? Local language? Car vs. walkable. . . lost in a maze of my own making.
Simple questions can ground us.
If I had one more year — or ten — would I still care about this?
If I loved myself truly and deeply, would I let myself experience this?
If I could only select based on one factor, which would it be?
That’s how I started dropping the weight. With infinite time and space, I’d keep all the books. But time is precious. Space is valuable. Empty space can give form to the new. Constraints are very useful.
A couple of weeks ago, I watched the gorgeous and cryptic The Tree of Life, a two-hour poem of a film, a prayer set to the rhythm of life, an exploration of the sacred beauty of our world. I wept like a baby at the end.
“Don’t do it like I did, promise me that,” the movie’s father tells his son. “I dreamed of being a great musician. I let myself get side-tracked. When you’re looking for something to happen, that was it. A lie, you lived it.”
He got lost in the maze. But is he honest?
In that moment, he continues to live the “lie,” really the story, a story like a labyrinth, one that keeps him on his path. One that he could exit.
Every day is a chance to change that lie to something truthful.
Every day we don’t show up and share our gift, both we and the world are losing out.
When we don’t follow our compass, when we don’t know what the compass is, we risk getting side-tracked.
This doesn’t have to be about work or creativity.
Your heart is a gift. So is your presence.
The partner you can be to someone is a gift only you can share.
“A lie, you lived it.”
The longest relationship I’ve had after my divorce was probably . . . half a year, more or less? I don’t keep track of the time and things fray at the edges. But yeah, it doesn’t amount to much.
I have been reading a bunch by Henrik Karlsson lately — a frustratingly good writer!
My favorite was his three-part series on his marriage. The most interesting thing I’ve read about romance in a while.
“You are born with this weird interiority that no one else can see,” he writes in Looking for Alice. “You can’t see it either at first. But if you run enough experiments you get a sense of how that inner space behaves. In particular, you can figure out which types of people can fuse with your interiority and expand it.”
Now, if you asked me about the women I’ve loved (often still feel a lot of love for? they were all, in their own ways, absolutely exceptional), I would not start with whether they “fused with and expanded my interiority.”
What did she look like? What was her energy?
How sensual was the experience with her? How was the sex?
Was she smart and curious? Did she have a big heart? What did she inspire in me?
Those kinds of questions would go through my head.
But Karlsson is aware and comfortable with his weirdness. He knows what he likes, what is important to him. What drew him into the relationship was the experience of discovery and expansion in a shared space of curiosity and care (or at least that’s the aspect he chooses to share).
“The words that came out of my mouth when I talked to her continually surprised me,” he adds in Dostoevsky as lover. His experience was intense and strange, impossible to communicate. “I remember with a cold sweat that I almost turned Johanna down because I felt confused by my inability to explain what our relationship was and why I liked it.”
I recall maybe two, maybe three times that happened to me. One was insanely painful, and it took me a long time to understand and get over my obsession. I think I stopped looking for that deep connection afterwards. Too painful when it ended. Too intimate. To be seen completely through the eyes of another? Serene. Also, terrifying.
I retreated — first to the surface where I didn’t show myself fully, then to hitting the pause on dating.
Karlsson writes about his marriage as a co-evolutionary loop, a dance unfolding over years, decades, possibly a whole life.
The type of person I’m assuming we’re looking for here is 1) someone that you will find fascinating to talk to after you’ve talked for 20,000 hours, 2) you feel comfortable with them talking through the hardest and most painful decisions you will face in your life, and 3) the conversation is wildly generative for both of you, in that it brings you out, helps you become.
It felt so intuitively right to think about the longevity of a relationship in terms of the space of communication and care. “This, I think, is a healthy way to think about love,” he writes. “It is about being invested in someone’s continual expansion.”
I began to realize how much I missed that kind of deep and evolving connection.
After my spiritual awakening, dating felt impossible.
We had to be a match emotionally, intellectually, spiritually, sexually . . . not to mention life stages, plans (kids? NYC or move?) . . . forget it. Too complicated.
Karlsson makes a good point that hit me like a bucket of cold water.
The thing is, there aren’t that many people you can have an amazing life with. Maybe 10,000, spread fairly evenly across the globe? A bit more if you’re less weird than me, perhaps. Anyway, the number is small enough that you can’t afford to be casual about it. You have to never let someone like that pass you by.
Don’t obsess over finding your perfect soulmate but do not be casual about finding one of those rare people who match your weirdness. Do not get side-tracked.
That co-evolutionary loop, that space of curiosity and care, that takes time to discover and develop.
Karlsson recommends “speedrunning” dating by “jumping directly to the strange parts.” “You do not like a category,” he writes. “You like individuals.” So “go talk to a thousand people (increasingly less randomly sampled)” and find “patterns in who makes you feel excited and alive and true and heard.”
Which leads to another idea of his that I like — writing in public as a search query to let the right people find you.
“That is perhaps the most solid dating advice I have, by the way—show the inside of your head in public, so people can see if they would like to live in there.”
It’s time to sit with the part of me that is fixated on independence.
It’s time to sit with the fear behind it.
Did I buy freedom at the price of intimacy?
Time to adjust the compass.
Do not get side-tracked.
Do not get side-tracked.
I will be at my friend Rohan’s upcoming event A Bridge Between Worlds (link has a discount on the ticket) with scientists who are bridge-builders, including Dr. Alan Lightman, Dr. Neil Theise and others.
Thursday, April 3rd. Stop by and say hi!
Join us for an evening with scientists who are bridge-builders, helping us ask profound questions about our yearning for ultimate meaning, the nature of consciousness, and what lies beyond the limits of what we can measure.
Dr. Alan Lightman on scientific materialism and spirituality, Dr. Scarlet Soriano on spirituality in medicine, Dr. Neil Theise on complexity theory and Zen Buddhism, and Dr. Katy Hinman on science education as a spiritual resource.
Youtube: If I loved myself truly and deeply, would I let myself experience this?
I’m experimenting with lots of prompts for mindbody writing. This one I got from Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It, Kamal Ravikant.
Pen and paper, timer 20+ minutes, stream of consciousness writing, always following the trail of emotional charge and discomfort/avoidance.
At first, I wrote about negative behaviors that I would no longer tolerate. Then I wrote about changes I would make to my environment (less noise, clutter). Then changes to my state (less fear, less guilt).
This led me to what I would not hold back on if I loved myself — I experienced a brief wave of sadness, then anger.
Finally, I would not hold myself back in my writing. I would write about what I love and believe.
After three pages, I ended with: “There is a whole life waiting and I am not getting started…” (Da wartet ein ganzes Leben und ich fange nicht an…”)
A tiny 20-minute roller coaster. This is why I love mindbody writing. It helps me release, let go, gain insight, and re-write the story of my life. And sometimes I even find creative gold in the shadow.
James Bailey: Where our heart echoes. An incredibly beautiful piece about the bonds that form in life and work, rich in wisdom, moved me to tears.
“Here is where we love and learn to let go. There is where we begin again, loving anew,” I said, witnessing the words as they left my lips. “If love and pain form the rhythm of the heart, here and there are the spaces they echo.”
I feel very in between the here and the there — a here that is losing reality and a there I cannot yet see. That space in-between offers room for unfolding. And James reminded me that the bonds of love don’t have to break with distance.
I also love that he carries a worn-out journal specifically "for life's great teachers."
I love The Emerald podcast and especially the latest: Singing to the beloved in times of crisis. It’s all about spirit, the breath of life, community, movement, the power of song and voice, and the strange “battle to monetize the wound.”
“The real gulf of America is the divide between us and our neighbors.”
Tom Morgan: The Most Important Word in the World. Shame, anger, choices, transformation. I read everything Tom writes but this one hit on so many ideas that are alive for me. . .
Throughout the years of my dark night of the soul, I fell from being a Managing Director at an investment bank to being rejected for $20,000 a year graduate jobs.
. . . At the very bottom of my private abyss the only thing I could feel was shame. But an incoherent, primal shame tied to the sense that I’d done something wrong. That I was damned and it was fundamentally my fault.
But this shame isn’t your fault. In fact the more you’re suffering, the more you may be learning.
Mona Sobhani: Clearing the Ashes *[Pt. 8]* I was so lucky to read this while editing The Weight. Mona offers her thoughts on an “apprenticeship with sorrow,” the practices and rituals that help us drop the weight and move through life.
“Hack #1: I framed the activity as active retrospective grieving and clearing for myself. Not like, “Let me get rid of this garbage that’s weighing me down” kind of way (which feels like a chore), but rather, “I have never properly thanked or honored all these moments and events in my life and I want to do that now, and kindly send them off” kind of way.
Hack #2: In the deep emotional work I’ve done over the past few years, I’ve noticed that grief, sadness, or hurt are usually underneath anger. What that means: in the middle of releasing anger, one of these sad emotions suddenly breaks through, dissolving the anger — clearly showing you that anger was just protecting sadness, which is the true emotional root.”
Mike just launched a coaching program for traders looking to face and work with their shadow.
Loved his short piece "I":
“Each day that I engage with markets, one of two “I”s may appear.
One trades from stillness. The other from craving.
One is real. The other, an illusion.
“I need … “ “I am …” “I will …” “I must …”
To trade as this “I” is not to trade a market, but to trade a concept of oneself.”
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.A joy, a depression, a meanness,
Some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
Invite discomfort. Let it be a teacher and guide. Write with it.
Until next time!
— Frederik
